| The Standard English Curriculum for Compulsory(2011)stipulates that pupils should reach the requirement of second level at their graduation from primary school.However,it goes without saying that there is a big gap between the English level of primary schools in rural areas and that of urban primary schools in China.In teaching practice,most graduates from rural primary schools have failed to meet the requirement.This special education situation in rural areas are attributed by some reasons,such as the insufficient attention for English subject,scarcity of teaching resources,and serious shortage of primary English teachers,etc.Besides,most students in villages are left-behind children without English homework tutoring.Furthermore,With the promotion of grades,the complexity and difficulty of English courses are increasing,especially in the higher grades of elementary schools.The biggest hindrance is vocabulary learning for the students in primary school.Meanwhile,some traditional vocabulary teaching methods are inefficient to some extent and new teaching methods and concepts are urgently needed to change the current situation.In accordance with human’s cognition,Mind Map may visualize thinking process by employing images,colors,and lines,which can greatly mobilize students’ initiative and improve learning efficiency.The research aims to testify the effectiveness of the applying Mind Map to English vocabulary teaching of senior grades in rural primary school.In the course of the experiment,test papers,questionnaires and interviews were served as the instruments.The research questions are: Question 1: What are the effects of Mind Map on English vocabulary learning of the senior-grade students in rural primary school? Question 2: Can Mind Map improve the rural pupils’ scores in English word-tests?The subjects of this experiment are 80 students from two parallel classes in the fifth grade of A primary school in Shanxi Province.The two classes taught by the researcher,with similar academic performance,physical and psychological conditions,were randomly selected as Experimental Class(EC)and Control Class(CC).The teaching process and method in both EC and CC were same except for vocabulary learning.Mind Map applied to words learning in EC,and the traditional teaching way adopted to vocabulary learning in CC as usual.This experiment lasted for five months.Before and after the experiment,the questionnaires were used to investigate the influence of Mind Map on English vocabulary teaching in rural primary schools.After the experiment,6 students in EC were interviewed to make up the deficiencies of the questionnaire surveys.Meanwhile,special vocabulary test papers were distributed to the students in both EC and CC,and the pre-test and post-test were conducted to verify whether Mind Map can improve the students’ English vocabulary level.The data obtained above were analyzed by SPSS 23.0.The conclusions of the study are:(1)The application of Mind Map has exerted the positive effects on English vocabulary teaching,which is beneficial to enhance the senior-grade pupils’ interest in words learning,ameliorate their vocabulary memory habits,cultivate their ability of word association,etc.(2)The scores of the senior-grade pupils’ word-tests in EC under the guidance of Mind Map are higher than those of the students using traditional learning methods in CC.Therefore,this study proves that Mind Map has a positive impact on the English vocabulary learning of higher grades in rural primary schools and can improve students’ word-tests performance.What’s more,the students may gradually cultivate their own unique vocabulary learning habits and methods in the process of participating in the drawing of mind maps,which is conducive to their future English learning.Although this research has some shortcomings and limitations,it is still hoped that the experimental results can provide some theoretical and practical teaching experience for the future English vocabulary teaching researches in rural primary schools. |
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